For the fourth year in a row, Wooten Kimbrough, P.A has been named a Tier 1 firm in Orlando for Personal Injury Litigation – Plaintiffs by U.S. News – Best Lawyers® “Best Law Firms” in 2014.
Wooten, Kimbrough, Damaso, and Dennis, P.A., an Orlando injury law firm with more than 100 years of combined experience between its attorneys, is pleased to announce they have been named a Tier 1 law firm in the inaugural Best Law Firms list published jointly by Best Lawyers® and U.S. News & World Report. To be listed as a Best Law Firm, at least one of the firm’s lawyers must be named as a Best Lawyer. Council Wooten, Jr. received that distinction. He and the other Orlando injury attorneys help clients who have been injured in auto accidents, truck accidents, medical malpractice, nursing home abuse and neglect, theme park injuries, food borne illnesses and food poisoning, wrongful death and products liability.
The first-time US News & World Report and Best Lawyers® rankings released this week are presented in tiers both nationally and by metropolitan area or by state. They showcase 8,782 different law firms ranked in one or more of 81 major practice areas. Due to the fact that the overall scores were often extremely close, the firms were not placed in a first, second or third position. Rather, they were placed in tiers. The first tier represents those firms that “scored within a certain percentage of the highest-scoring firm(s).”
Wooten, Kimbrough, Damaso, and Dennis, P.A. was listed as a first tier firm under the Personal Injury-Plaintiffs practice area. The state of Florida had 121 tier-one law firms in that practice area, and only six of those were located in Orlando. The rankings were based on peer surveys combined with more than 3.1 million evaluations of individual lawyers in the most recent Best Lawyers survey of leading lawyers.
“Most Thorough, Accurate, and Helpful Rankings of Law Firms Ever Developed”
One of the publishers, Steven Naifeh, President of Best Lawyers, stated the collaboration by the two publishers produced “the most thorough, accurate, and helpful rankings of law firms ever developed.”
The rankings were generated following a detailed survey. In the end, 9,514 clients – including every Fortune 100 company – provided 194,370 firm practice-area evaluations; 6,190 clients provided 11,181 comments about law firm practice areas and individual lawyers; and 8,842 lawyers provided 594,012 firm practice-area evaluations.
The surveys collected data based on a firm’s reputation using a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the strongest. Clients were asked to vote on expertise, responsiveness, understanding of a client and his or her needs, cost-effectiveness, civility, and whether they would refer someone else as a client to that firm. Lawyers rated each other on expertise, responsiveness, integrity, cost-effectiveness, as well as whether they would refer a matter to a firm and if they consider a firm a worthy competitor.
Calculating the Results
Marketing-officer and recruiting-officer surveys provided information on education, background, and memberships in prestigious organizations.
In addition, the following data was collected: a firm’s typical client; the amount of pro-bono work performed (based on a percentage of lawyers who do the pro-bono work to the total number of pro-bono hours); and diversity of the firm. The survey also gathered information about firm practice areas, such as the monetary value of matters handled by the law firms and the significance of such cases.
Firms did not provide the information directly, but efforts were made to secure the data by alternate means.
Best Lawyers’ most recent annual survey received 3.1 million evaluations of 39,372 individual leading lawyers. Since some clients select a firm based on an outstanding individual lawyer in addition to the overall strength of a firm, a firm’s score for a particular practice area was impacted by the number of lawyers from the firm who were listed in Best Lawyers, adjusted for firm size and other variables. In all cases, lawyer votes were weighted according to the voter’s Best Lawyers record, and client votes were weighted according to the client’s standing. Outlying votes were disregarded.
All of the data was then combined into a U.S. News – Best Lawyers overall score for each firm. Then based on that overall score, the firms were placed in a tier ranking for 171 metropolitan areas in 7 states and a national list. The metropolitan list included as many as 81 practice areas, and there were 39 practice areas in the national list.
The complete rankings are online at www.usnews.com/bestlawfirms. The national first-tier rankings was featured in the October print issue of U.S. News & World Report.
Contact our Orlando injury lawyers to learn more about our credentials, our community participation and our commitment to excellence. We have helped several of our injured clients seek justice for injuries they sustained or loved ones they lost due to others’ negligence. Call (407) 843-7060 and we can set up a free consultation to go over your potential case.
Legally Written and Reviewed by a Managing Partner
Wooten, Kimbrough, Damaso & Dennis, P.A.
Our content is written and reviewed by our founding attorneys Butch Wooten, Orman Kimbrough, Mike Damaso, and Tom Dennis. Helping the injured since 1966, they’ve successfully handled thousands of personal injury cases across Florida. Whether you’re a Florida resident or an out-of-state visitor injured in Florida, we’re dedicated to providing clear and reliable information to help you navigate your legal options confidently.